This blog contains the daily technical endeavours of a freelancing software-designer.

2013-09-11

The last honours for my Thing-o-Matic

Looking at this blog, it must feel like I'm not doing nothing at the moment.
This is far from the truth. Since I tried to keep things focused and have just one blog-post per project with all the infos one would need to replicate my work.

Problem is: Where does one project and the next begin.

Yesterday I prepared the new electronics for my TravelCNC.
Today I gave my untrusty ThingOMatic the last honours and dismantled it.
I'll keep the main boards, the extruder controller and the extruder stepper driver.
However the mechanics will be that of my TravelCNC.
Mach3 will control the CNC's motion and also give STEP+DIR pulses to the extruder stepper driver.
The external display and keypad will help me set just the temperature while Mach3 executes the g-code. (With the extruder=E axis renamed to A.)

One thing I noticed was that the GND cable of the extruder heater had molten it's mounting port.
Since the extruder never had any issues with heating up or keeping hot, this doesn't seem to have had any impace. The cable never moved after all.

Excuse the pool photos as I didn't bring any of my cameras to this location.